Macao Special Administration Region (SAR) government's income from direct gaming taxes for the first seven months of this year rose 51.4 percent year-on-year to 24.24 billion patacas (3.03 billion U.S. dollars), according to the figures released by the SAR's Finance Service Bureau (DSF).

The gaming taxes collected in the first seven months of this year has already exceeded those for the whole of 2006, which stood at 19.78 billion patacas (2.47 dollars), and was close to last year 's 29.34 billion patacas (3.67 billion dollars).

The strong growth of the SAR government's gaming tax income came as revenues generated from Macao's gaming sector reached 58.7billion patacas (7.34 dollars) in the first half of this year, an increase of 54.6 percent year-on-year. Under local laws, Macao's 30 casinos pay 35 percent of their gross revenues as direct tax to the government.

Earlier this month, the SAR's Secretary for Economy and Finance, Tam Pak Yuen, predicted that the gaming sector's gross revenues for the whole of 2008 will reach a record 100 billion patacas (12.5 billion dollars), though the revenue growth will slow down in the second half of this year.

Driven by the strong gaming tax revenues growth, the DSF figures also showed that the government's total revenue for the first seven months of this year exceeded 30 billion patacas (3.75 dollars), rising significantly by 37.4 percent over the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, the SAR government's total expenditure in the period amounted to 10.64 billion patacas (1.33 billion dollars), an increase of 62.5 percent year-on-year.